I remember when I heard we were going to build a new stadium in Downtown Indianapolis for the Indianapolis Indians. My reaction was, “Why in the hell would we do that?”
Bush Stadium, back in the day.
Because Bush Stadium, out on West 16th Street, was a gem. A miniature Wrigley Field. Where Hank Aaron played for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League. The place John Sayles shot Eight Men Out.
Doors Henry Aaron used to walk through.
The place I took my son every summer to see Indians baseball games. Where we watched fireworks on Independence Day and saw a young beanpole named Randy Johnson mow down a bunch of PawSox. (Or Mud Hens. Or Tides. I don’t rightly remember.)
The view, approximately, from the pitcher's mound where Randy Johnson used to stand.
Where my pal Kurt Hunt sold group tickets and wrote press releases and announced that “Rrrrrr-azor Shines” was approaching the batter’s box. Where I shot my favorite commercial I ever wrote, for Hook Drugs, back around 1989.
Where Kurt Hunt used to sit.
Bush Stadium was a beautiful ballpark, with ivy-covered walls and dank, foul-smelling bathrooms and not a bad seat in the house. Today those seats are filled with trash, overgrown with vines and weeds and bushes invading up the right field line.
An equipment rack tossed from the offices. These used to be great seats.
These seats are taken.
I may have sat here for a game or two.
I loved Bush Stadium and didn’t want to see it abandoned. There are certain places you want to believe are immune to entropy, if only in your own mind (which is deteriorating, as well. There is no way around entropy).
And it’s hard to complain about Victory Field (except for the uninspired name. Seriously? That’s the best we could come up with?) It’s a jewel of an urban ballpark, a beautiful place to spend a summer afternoon making pencil scratches on a scorecard, drinking beer and ogling girls and watching young men play ball. Triple A ball is the last bastion of baseball innocence before the players make the Show–if they make the Show–and become millionaires. It’s almost like the big leagues back in the ’50s, when the players had to sell insurance or work in a liquor store in the off-season to make ends meet. (It isn’t really like this, but it’s nice to pretend.)
And John Watson, a developer and historical preservationist, has plans to rescue our venerable old stadium from its current state of disrepair. He’s planning to build loft apartments inside Bush Stadium’s facade. Far better this than the low-rent racetrack it turned into after the Indians moved to Victory Field, or the auto graveyard it became after that.
I hope that happens. Bush Stadium is still too beautiful a place to be leveled by the wrecking ball. And all those ghosts of all those seasons past–the ballplayers who never made the majors, whose baseball odysseys ended here, and all the fans who loved them–would have no place else to go.
I’d love to see that Hook’s ad sometime.
I saw quite a few games at Bush Studium back in the 1970s, as seen here. Great old place.
It’s possible that spot lives deep in a box somewhere, Evan. Maybe on VHS. More likely on 3/4″ tape or something goofy like that.
The premise was: batter hits a towering fly ball; center fielder has no sunglasses. Amazingly, he has time to run out the back gate to Hook’s, buy some sunglasses, and settle back under the fly ball to make the catch.
I wish there was an online museum of local advertising. Something more curated than YouTube, I mean.
Sad–cities in smaller TV markets need minor league baseball, and minor league baseball needs to be in those cities. I remember going to a game in Oklahoma City (89ers?) back in the 60s. And I wrote a novel about a fictional minor league team in Worcester, Mass. Reality caught up with fiction–by the time it was published a team had moved there.
Thanks for keeping Bush alive KH. Those pictures are shocking to anyone who inhabited that place, and especially to cats like me who (Thank you Diki) cleaned the stands, mowed the grass, and for a few homestands, got to fill in as the visiting clubhouse boy…a vaguely homo-erotic job title that really meant caterer. OK OK, there was a carnal concierge aspect, but that meant passes to the strip club down the street, and procuring weed. Good times.
Thanks for the memories. I hit a 2-run homer at Bush Stadium during the high school summer league championship back in 1981. The ball hit the billboard above the scoreboard, and the outfielder played the ball off the billboard as if it was in play. I’d never hit a ball that far in my life, so I just put my head down and ran like hell not knowing where it landed. I ended up at third base with a stand-up triple (and driving in a run). My coach argued with the umpire for a while, and then the ump twirled his finger signalling a home run. I only got a 90-foot home run trot, but we won the game 2-1. I’ll never forget that day.
What a tragedy.
I have not thought of the place until you sent me this link.
In 1981 I returned to Indy for a visit and hung out there for a week with Kurt Hunt and Mike Prow, who was clubhouse manager (?) at the time. The Indians were on the road and we had the place to ourselves….and the army of retired volunteers giving Hunt grief for various details. Hitting fungoes, playing catch, walking the stands. The week ended with the Indians returning for a game (with Razor in the lineup).
In the late 1960s I saw a Phillies game in Connie Mack Stadium in Philly. It was Like Bush…with seats sweeping in a low angle to the field, so that you fee you are siting on the field. That was one of the last before they moved to Veterans Stadium. A few years later I saw a game at Veterans in the upper deck. It was like watching a bunch of ants moving around…horrible.
I hear that Veterans has been or is being torn down(true?). And the trend is toward more
classic-style stadiums.
Indeed, why the hell woud you tear that down….renovate the gem!